


A Journey of Returns

by Cyn



Category: Robin McKinley - Damar series
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2006, recipient:teaotter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-25
Updated: 2006-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:16:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyn/pseuds/Cyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The valley is both a home and a prison</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Journey of Returns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teaotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/gifts).



When he and Aerin part ways, and Luthe makes the journey back to his valley, he feels like he is reliving every trip he's taken away from the valley and his lake of dreams, except this one is harder and he feels older than he ever did before. Each step of the way, taken at a much slower pace than his trip from the valley, is a painful reminder of the years and the other journeys; journeys that were not as hard to deal with as the one he is making, but painful still, each of them in their own ways.

-

Luthe found the valley on random chance; the Meeldtar had whispered to him of a Lake of Dreams, but Luthe was not out looking for it. He knew that the waters of the Lake of Dreams touched many shores - he could stumble upon it anywhere, if he had been looking for it.

But he had the luck to find the valley, alive with the spring taking hold of the land, and knew that the area could make a pleasant place to return to between his travels. The forest surrounding it promised shelter from the rest of the world, and with a few manipulations of the lake and his talents, spring would always remain: a heaven of sorts, from everything else.

The world was not young, but it was not old, and Luthe felt his age, or lack of, not in his bones, but his mind. He didn't stay long in the valley, that first time, only long enough to start the hall that would one day become his home. The seasons had come and gone outside of the valley, but he paid no attention to them and isn't phased when he leaves and it is almost nearing spring once again.

-

The next time he returned to the valley, he was tired and sore, weary in the soul. The hall he had started wasn't finished, but it offers enough shelter and the forest turns up enough vegetation that he can regain his strength easily, even though it's the middle of winter elsewhere.

It was that second trip that Luthe started paying attention to the valley. Once his strength was back, he started working more on everything: the hall, stone after stone going up in place, until he was happy with the structure.

Luthe didn't think about the future then; when the future stretches in front of you like the horizon, promising to never end, the future isn't important. So when he left again, there was no pen for cows or a barn. He's not going to be there permanently, so why worry about those things?

-

Years passed before he returned a third time. The stone walls of his hall were growing smooth from nature's wear, although once he returned whatever season had been there previously disappears, leaving high spring in its wake.

He can't stop the rain, however, and on the days when it is pouring outside, he stays with the interior walls of his hall. The last trip he had been on gave him grand ideas of images and the tools to carve them into the stone with.

And when it wasn't raining, he only worked more on it, in-between learning even more and the trips to the lake of dreams, not too far from his front door. The hall grew, until he was truly happy with it.

-

The fourth return found him with another person, one of the few he formally invited to the valley. It was a friend from school, a fellow mage like himself, and it was on that trip he has the blue sword. He hides it in one of the rooms and instead of working, spends time entertaining his guest: in this time, he views a glimpse of the future and what it could hold for him.

Luthe's guest leaves after a single season, a short time for them, but Luthe doesn't mind. The vision of the future he had seen alternately scares him and interests him and Luthe doesn't know what to make of either feeling. He's a mage, and dislikes the thought of being scared, but interest? In such a simple valley?

That mystifies him.

-

The years stretched out between the fourth visit to the valley the fifth, but when he returned once again, Luthe stayed longer than he had before. He found peace there, dreams he knew were controlled by the Meeldtar, but he doesn't mind them; in fact, he came to enjoy them, and life was simple. Luthe had his books and his knowledge and he was content. It was enough.

But the wanderlust was still in him - he was young still, even if he had seen generations pass by him, and the thought of settling wasn't one that sat well. He left again, but with a heart heavier than it had been before, on his leavings.

-

It wasn't years this time, but a few seasons; and the returns became more common, until the valley was seeing more of Luthe than the rest of the world. He left when needed, but reluctantly and returned swiftly.

After returning yet again - he'd lost count, by then, how many times he'd wandered into the mountains and allowed his feet to wander from the trail to find the valley - Luthe spent time thinking about why he had found such a home in the valley, a rare moment of introspection for a man who rarely was. And decided why, although it was something he had always known: life was simple there, uncomplicated. After a life full of the complications being a mage brought, something so effortless was pleasant.

The times he left after that he could count easily, because they were so few, even if more people came to his valley than he would have wished for. And by the time Aerin stepped onto the grass that marked the valley, he hadn't left in years, but it wasn't a promise, just a mental block against leaving. He knew, if the time came again, with necessity, he could leave.

-

He returns to the valley torn, but content. He has sent Aerin to her destiny, has watched her grow and will continue to watch her grow, and he knows she'll return to him, one day: it's just a matter of waiting.

When he reaches the peaceful valley, with the cows grazing in the meadow and deer stopping to watch him, and the Lake of Dreams greeting him with a pleasant voice and promising a dream or two or a thousand, Luthe makes the promise to never leave it again. Before, it was simply: he does not wish to leave and so he shall not. Now, it is a promise and a vow.

The valley is home, and he has grown too old to leave home again.

  



End file.
